


Considerations and Questions

by kikibug13



Category: Rush (2013)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:22:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kikibug13/pseuds/kikibug13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clay Regazzoni questions what this sport is coming to, again. It's a regular thing, since Niki Lauda came onto the racing scene, unexpected and like little they'd dealt with, before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Considerations and Questions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lakester](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lakester/gifts).



> Have wonderful holidays!
> 
> Many thanks for the support and beta.

"You bashed that man's face in. Why did you do that?"

"Did you hear what he asked?"

"I did. You are not exactly his friend, or teammate, or anything like that."

"No, I am not."

"Then why?"

Hunt's lips pressed tight, and Clay thought he might not answer, for a moment. That maybe he'd attack _him_... but he didn't believe so. Not the latter, at least.

"I couldn't take it back. It was my fault that he crashed, remember? You even voted with him, and I mocked him, and I couldn't take it back. But I could make that idiot stop asking that stupid question. Could make it never ask him or anyone else anything like that again." The blond hair fell around the set face. "Because Lauda was right."

Clay almost asked more. But didn't. He shook his head and let Hunt go.

It was... all that there was to say, about Niki, really. He was _right_. He wasn't what one thought about a sportsman, he didn't race for the thrill of it - he was just _good_ at it. At the racing, at the engineering, at all of their business. And he was good at each and every aspect of the races.

Except for the people. And, even there, he had more fortune than the shining sun that Hunt was. He had Marlene. 

He even had Clay himself. Maybe it was odd, or wrong, but that was how that team partnership had panned out. 

Clay shook his head, and moved on. But his thoughts kept on coming back to that. To the shared memories, to the memories that should have been and the ones that shouldn't have been as they were. 

He'd once given up on Lauda. He'd tried and tried and tried to make a friend for him, to make him feel welcome, to make him a part of the racers family - the kind that shared rumors like Hunt's sexual prowess, that went to parties away from civilization but ones where money and style rubbed shoulders with the rest of them - all the attempts had failed. And, yet, Lauda had found Marlene even with the failure. He'd kept on winning, kept on moving despite all that should have stopped him. 

Because he'd been right. 

Clay had to reconsider his own approach to the sport, a little, didn't he? Clearly, the show runners wanted what Lauda offered, with the change between the two of them even before Niki had won the title. Before he'd crashed and returned to the wheel. 

Or did Clay have to re-evaluate? He'd raced longer than Lauda. He had friends, and roots in this sport - sure, Ferrari were bastards, and, for all their talk about it being a 'family,' they only cared about winning, but they _had_ wanted him back. They'd wanted him back badly enough to agree to his demand that they take on Niki, too, and that had to mean something, right? That had to mean his way was a good way, too, if not the same as Lauda's. 

Clay almost thought his position would be easier if he didn't get it. If he didn't understand how Niki could practically dry out the fun of all of it. His talk about percentages and chances and all his damn logic, making the sport an entirely different thing. It wouldn't matter - it wouldn't matter at all, if he didn't understand, except Niki kept _winning_. Clay did know what he was doing, he did know why and what for and still, it was a horrifying approach to the sport. 

All the same, he was, as Hunt had said, right. He'd been completely right even though he hadn't been confident enough it to back off before he got burned. (Was that really better or worse than dying? Dying was once and for all, this was exercising one's will every day to just function. And, yet, Niki got back into the car, no matter what it cost him. Was that the same lifeless man who talked about logic and percentages? Or was it something that Clay hadn't quite seen in him, but he thought it had to be there, to fuel that iron will?)

But then there was that now so-distant revelation, in the car on the way to a party. If Niki could do anything else, he would do that. But he didn't think he could (Clay doubted that, what with how much Lauda knew and understood about the cars themselves, but the statement still stood). He didn't love racing, he maybe didn't even like it. He didn't see a choice.

Possibly, he was right about that, as well as nearly everything else. 

But that wasn't what Clay was seeing. It wasn't what Marlene was seeing, he was sure - from what he remembered of her relationship with Jurg, she wasn't a woman who settled for 'not good enough for anything else' - and she'd been by his side through much. 

"Feh." 

Clay shook his head, heading back to his own car. 

He'd been angry, last season, when Ferrari downgraded him. Hell, he'd been angry when Niki kept on winning, with his dispassionate, logical, systematic driving. Lauda didn't care that much for what the audience thought - the audience in the seats _or_ the audience in the pits - he didn't care much for support, he didn't care much for the glory, for the victory...

He just. Raced. And won. 

It was true, however, that Clay wouldn't be leaving him behind to make his own friends ever again. He hadn't beaten the journalist who attacked him, but that didn't mean he hadn't wanted to. He just needed to keep his nose clean more.

Or maybe he didn't feel as guilty as Hunt did, for that race. He did feel bad - but he couldn't have known. Maybe he should have argued with Niki, not just _voted_ with him, at the meeting. Maybe he should have been more supportive. But the twenty-percent thing, it had grated on his nerves. It had made him angry, if not as bad as it had made Hunt mad, going for the blood. Going for the win. 

No, Clay definitely didn't feel _as_ guilty, even if the memory of August 1st was hell on them all. 

He just thought that, maybe he felt about as confused about his teammate as the Brit did.

Now it was a matter of watching his back, the way teammates were supposed to do. As he'd tried from the very beginning. 

There had to be a way, no? Unless Ferrari dumped him again. 

Clay chewed on that thought. Well, not before the end of the season, he didn't think. And there were a few races left, till that. 

"Hey, Niki."

"Clay."

"You need a hand with anything?"

"Nah, I'm good. Danke."

Clay waved a hand and nodded, then went to check in with his mechanics. Lauda had set a precedent, and then some, to make sure you knew what was happening with your car. Clay wasn't as good, but he could at least give it a try. 

And, in the back of his mind, he knew that Niki, for all that he didn't agree with him and his ways, had changed Formula One in a way that it would never recover from. It was just still the top race, any race, so Clay was sticking around to see where it would all go.


End file.
